The sky wept flame.
Mana-fed infernos rippled across the firmament as a lone figure—wreathed in a mantle of flickering radiance—stood defiant against the thing that should not exist. A mage. His staff split the air like a judgment. Spires of fire surged forth, carving rivers of molten ruin toward the abomination that slithered through reality like rot beneath skin. It had too many limbs. Too many mouths. Its face unraveled with every blink, as if the world itself couldn't bear to shape it properly.
Beside the mage, a swordmaster drifted through blood-smoke and ruin like a shadow with a spine. His blade hummed with ancient hunger. Each strike shredded sinew, collapsed space, and erased form. He didn't fight. He exorcised.
The creature shrieked—no, it fed noise into the air, a howl stitched from starveling infants and grinding stone. The world recoiled.
And then—it groaned.
A gate tore open. Not with majesty, but with the wet crack of bone splitting wrong.
The battle ended.
The battlefield was gone.
Far away, the scream echoed into dream.
In a forgotten cradle of crags and cold, a boy woke.
Mjull.
The mountain village clung to the world's spine like a secret never meant to be found. Mist threaded between crooked rooftops like spilled breath. The air reeked of wet stone, rotted pine, and the coppery tang of time.
Icariel sat perched on a thatched rooftop, hunched like a crow waiting for something to die. A tattered cloak clung to his frame, wind-worn and memory-thin. Dark hair slicked his forehead with sweatless damp. His eyes—black, glassy, haunted—devoured the morning light like a starving thing too afraid to bite.
In his palm: a crust of bread hard as old bone.
He didn't eat.
[You should eat.]
The voice was not thought. It was presence. Like thunder hiding behind breath. Ancient. Impossibly still.
"I don't feel like it," Icariel muttered.
[Survival demands strength. Strength demands sustenance.]
His breath fogged the air—ghost-white and shaking. He bit into the bread. It tasted like mildew and dust. Mold and memory.
Mjull lay beneath him—twenty homes sagging under the weight of forgotten years. No roads led to glory. Only down. And no one ever came back from down.
But Icariel had never belonged here.
Sixteen, and already taller than most grown men—lean, carved by stone winds and forest teeth. His body was mountain-raised. But it wasn't his strength that made him alien.
It was the voice.
Not guidance. Not madness. A second soul grafted to his marrow. It spoke without lies. Without comfort. It knew things. It had always known.
[Fear is wisdom, Icariel. But fear without control is death.]
He tucked his knees beneath his chin, as if trying to fold into something smaller, something ignorable.
"I've heard it since I could think. It doesn't tell me what it is. I don't even think it knows anymore. It just... speaks. And I listen. It never lies. And never speaks when it doesn't need to."
A pause.
"I think about dying more than anyone else I know. More than dreams. More than breathing. Like a wolf thinks about meat. But it's not the pain that terrifies me. It's the silence. The absence. The nothing."
He swallowed hard.
"Other boys—they talk about fighting beasts, finding power. They rush toward danger like it's a warm hearth. But I don't understand them. I don't want to."
A tremor chased his voice.
"I just want to live."
That fear—his parasite and protector—pressed close, a second spine. His gaze wandered toward the narrow trail winding down the mountain.
He had never walked it. Not once.
Past it were stories. Mages. Swordmasters. Gates carved into flesh-thin reality. Monsters. Legends shaped like open wounds.
He had read about them in pages that reeked of fire and mildew.
"What good is wanting more," he whispered, "if it means dying?"
The silence pressed in.
Then the voice came, low as burial:
[What good is fearing death if it means never living?]
His pulse kicked. The voice had never challenged him before. Never weighed him like prey.
A shout cracked the stillness like brittle bone.
"Icariel! Stop brooding and get down here!"
Below stood Finn—wide-shouldered, wild-haired, his cheeks streaked with dirt like warpaint. He waved, breathless already.
"Something's in the forest! Father says it's not like anything we've seen!"
Icariel froze. Wolves were normal. Shadows, sometimes. But new meant danger. New meant unpredictable. And unpredictability meant death.
His gut screamed: stay.
The voice hissed different.
[Go.]
They moved.
Cold air peeled at Icariel's skin as he sprinted after Finn. He passed the hunter's lodge and grabbed an axe—old, heavy, its grip shaped by the ghosts of calloused hands. Finn snatched a bow, slinging a quiver with the ease of practice.
"You ever get bored of the usual wolves and ghosts?" Finn called. "Maybe this one's finally exciting!"
Icariel's grip whitened. "Or fatal."
Finn laughed, unbothered. "Gods, you're dramatic."
Icariel didn't hunt for thrill. He hunted because Mjull demanded it.
"Earn your food."
That was the law. The only law.
He had no blood family. No memory of parents. The villagers had taken him in—out of obligation, not love. If he didn't contribute, he didn't eat. Simple as that.
A roof, a meal, a place to exist. All bought with risk.
Finn suddenly stopped, pointing to a tree.
"Look. Three Xs. That means turn right and go straight. Father marked it."
Carved deep into bark—three slashes, angled. A silent code. The hunters' trail system, passed down through scraped hands and whispered rules.
Icariel nodded—
Then froze.
The voice in his skull whispered—uncertain. Tense.
[…Turn left.]
He blinked.
"Why?" he asked inwardly.
A pause.
[Left.]
The voice had never misled him. Never once.
"Finn," Icariel said quietly. "Let's go left."
Finn frowned. "Why? The signs say right."
"I have a hunch."
Finn groaned. "Not your damn hunches again. Every time you say that, we nearly die. But fine. You're never wrong."
They turned. Left. Into pathless wood.
The mist thickened. The light grew sickly.
And then—a growl.
Not beast. Not machine. A thing with breath and intent. It trembled through the ground like a buried heart waking up.
"We're close," Finn said, panting. "The others must be here already."
But the voice in Icariel's mind curled tighter. Cold.
He whispered, "What is that sound…?"
It felt wrong.
"Come on!" Finn shouted, bolting ahead.
They reached a clearing.
And found no one.
Just trees. Still. Silent.
No hunters. No blood. No trail.
Panic bloomed in Icariel's gut.
Then—from the tree line—it came.
A bear, but not. Crimson skin like peeled meat. Eyes black and infinite. Its steps cracked the earth. It bled—but not from wounds it felt.
Finn fired. The arrow bounced off like ash against stone.
"So much for your hunch," Finn whispered, trembling.
The voice inside Icariel roared.
[DUCK. NOW.]
He moved before thinking, dragging Finn down.
Impact.
A tree tore through the clearing like a thrown spear. It annihilated the bear in a geyser of gore and ruin.
They stared. Silent. Shaking.
Galien stood behind them—taller than both, shoulders broad as barn doors, arms veined with unnatural strength. He wore only black pants and a sleeveless tunic, his body a tapestry of old wounds. An X-shaped scar stretched across his shoulder.
"Father!" Finn shouted, relief flooding his voice.
Galien scratched his head. "Damn thing was fast. Needed bait."
Finn blinked. "...You used us?"
Galien grinned. "Worked, didn't it?"
"You're insane," Finn muttered.
"Maybe. Still alive, though."
Galien looked at Icariel. "Even the scaredy-cat showed up. Impressive."
"Stop mocking him!" Finn huffed.
Galien ruffled Finn's hair. "Shut up. I like him more than you."
"Fatherrrr!"
Icariel wasn't laughing.
He was watching. Thinking.
They'd followed the wrong trail—yet arrived first. Faster than the hunters who'd left before them.
That didn't make sense.
He turned to Galien, voice sharp. "Why did you leave three Xs? That means turn right. But we went left."
Galien blinked. "Three? No… I carved two. That path was never meant to go right."
Silence fell.
Icariel's skin prickled with cold that had nothing to do with weather.
He turned toward the woods.
Something else had changed the mark.
Or someone.
The voice didn't speak.
But the stillness did.
And it told him one thing.
They weren't alone.